


find the map and draw a straight line

by epigraphs



Category: Madam Secretary
Genre: Angst but not overwhelming amounts, F/M, Minor Character Death, for the April fic challenge, non-graphic mentions of injuries, non-graphic mentions of violence, post-Desert Storm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23522710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epigraphs/pseuds/epigraphs
Summary: "The first thing she feels when she steps off the cargo plane and onto Iraqi soil is heat, rolling over them in waves."Elizabeth is sent to Iraq post-Desert Storm. For the April fic challenge. (Crosspost from ffn/teammccord.)
Relationships: Elizabeth McCord/Henry McCord
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16





	find the map and draw a straight line

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my entry for the April fic challenge (and technically the March one too, because it’s partially set in a hospital and I had the idea last month but never got round to writing it). My three things are: a day with no wind, scuba gear and a ponytail. 
> 
> Heads up for mentions of graphic violence and injuries. 
> 
> Title is from “Set The Fire To The Third Bar,” by Snow Patrol. This is set in the mid-to-late ’90s, in the aftermath of Desert Storm. Stevie is a toddler and Henry is getting his PhD. 
> 
> Thank you to A and M for the edits and encouragement. This is [crossposted](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13544703/1/find-the-map-and-draw-a-straight-line) on ffn, where I'm teammccord.

I.

The first thing she notices is how dry her mouth feels. It’s like someone shoved sandpaper down her throat, harsh and gritty and cutting, and she lets out a sound that’s somewhere between a croak and a groan before she even manages to crack open an eye.

That task proves harder; her eyelids are heavy and crusty, and it takes a Herculean effort to lift one, then two, then blink three times to dislodge the sand that seems to have invaded every pore of her being. The room around her is too bright, fuzzy around the edges, and Elizabeth doesn’t recognize it at all. It’s only when a kind voice says, “It’s okay, you’re in a hospital,” that the gears in her brain start turning again.

A hospital? She tries to move and sit up, to understand what’s going on, but immediately her body screams in protest. Everything hurts, from her head to her leg — which is in a cast and probably broken — to her abdomen, sharp pain mixed with a dull ache that radiates through every inch of her body. She grits her teeth and resolutely ignores it because she _has_ to sit up and find out where she is and worry about Dan and Caroline and Ahmed and all the rest of them and — 

The pain turns blinding as soon as she inches forward and she slumps back into the cushions with a groan, wincing as her back makes contact with the mattress. She screws her eyes shut and wills the wave of pain and nausea to subside, takes a deep breath and opens them again.

The room is less blurry now, and she can tell it’s a standard-issue hospital room, white and sterile with beeping monitors and lights and cords and drips of IV fluid. Right now though, none of that is important, except, “Water,” which Elizabeth croaks out at a volume that’s barely above a whisper.

She feels like she hasn’t had a sip in years, like her insides are shrivelling up and turning into the same dust she’s covered in, a thin layer that coats her skin and has settled in her hair. She’d reach up and scratch it like an itch, try to dislodge the feeling, but after her earlier failed attempt at moving, she decides against it.

The nurse is by her bedside immediately with a plastic cup of water and a straw, and Elizabeth accepts it gratefully, greedily swallowing as much as she can. It’s cool and soothing as it passes down her throat, the first feeling of relief she’s experienced since she woke up. She finishes most of the water before lifting her head again.

The nurse is American, that much Elizabeth can tell, and judging by the number of tubes and IVs currently in her body she must be banged up pretty bad, so they probably Medevac-ed her to the nearest military hospital. Landstuhl, maybe? The nurse deposits the water on her bedside table and Elizabeth gives a grateful nod.

“Where am I?” she manages, voice still hoarse and scratchy. “What happened?”

The nurse looks at her with a mix of worry and pity. Dread settles itself deep in Elizabeth’s gut and spreads through every vein in her body. _What happened?_

“You’re at Landstuhl in the hospital, Elizabeth. You’ve been stabbed.”

II.

There’s nothing quite like the blazing desert sun beating down on you in the dry months, a hundred and ten degrees on a day with no wind, stifling and suffocating and utterly consuming. It feels like drifting at sea on a boat with lifeless sails, leaving you beholden to the forces of nature and helpless on your own. Elizabeth squints as she exits the barracks, holding one hand out in front of her as she uses the other to root through her bag for a pair of sunglasses. 

Sweat is already pooling at her temples, gathering at the small of her back, the nape of her neck, under the headscarf she drapes loosely over her hair (blonde sticks out like a sore thumb in a sea of brown and black). She wears her hair in a ponytail when she’s on base, tied high on her head to give her some modicum of relief.

But a low French braid is the best hairstyle for under a scarf, she’s learned over the years, and so she has to deal with the tip tickling her collarbone every once in a while. She pushes up the sleeves of her button-down as far as she dares and turns back to check that her team are all with her.

Dan is an operative who’s been in the region for a decade, assigned to the “newbies” to make sure they don’t get lost — or killed, as he tends to joke far too often for Elizabeth’s liking. Caroline is a fellow analyst from Langley; she and Elizabeth have worked on ops together before and she’s glad for a familiar face (and another woman). Ahmed rounds out their little group; he’s their fixer and translator and self-professed tour guide. Even though they all speak Arabic, it’s good to have a local around. 

They’re at a military base near Baghdad, in a more rural area with markets and streets full of houses and small shops and mosques. It’s deceptively pedestrian but Elizabeth knows the air here is heavy with tension; every step feels like they’re trying not to let loose a tightly coiled spring.

She knows enough about Desert Storm from Henry, from her job and all the briefings she’d been given before coming here, but it’s entirely different to see the aftermath in real life. When Henry couldn’t describe the desert to her after he returned from his first deployment, she thought it was mainly because of what he’d been forced to bear witness to — death and pain and anguish from twenty thousand feet in the air, a bird’s eye view of destruction.

Now she knows that wasn’t all of it, that while the landscape is unforgiving and harsh and stifling it’s also beautiful and raw. She can’t find the words to describe it either, even though she’s in the middle of it, surrounded by the swell and heat of the desert on all sides. 

(She thinks sometimes of what she’ll say to Henry when she gets home, the first words that’ll leave her mouth after she says hello to her husband and young daughter and wraps herself in the smell of pine and spice and baby powder, the smell of home. 

She wonders how her husband will feel now that they share one more thing between them, one more set of experiences they can’t really talk about lest they let state secrets slip. Will it bring them closer together? Or will it draw them apart?) 

Elizabeth and Caroline are green, bright-eyed (says Ahmed) and naive (says Dan), overwhelmed by all that surrounds them. It’s all real now, the things they’d hear about in briefings, the cities they’d track on servers, waiting for pings and shreds of intel to make their way halfway across the world.

Now they’re tangible, overwhelming, alive. 

Today, they’re going into the market square with a half-day of nothing to do and Elizabeth has been looking forward to it all week. After days of being cooped up on the base, she can tell they’re all going a bit stir crazy.

As they make their way toward the market, Ahmed tells them about spices they can only get in this region, about sweet dates and cardamom cookies called _hadgi badah,_ topped with almonds and flavoured with rose water, that remind him of his childhood playing with his sisters. Caroline says she wants to look for a patterned shawl and Dan shakes his head at his gang’s frivolous pursuits. 

Elizabeth just wants to see the people, ordinary Iraqis whose lives have to continue on long after the conflict ends and the media turns its lens somewhere else, women and children who have to adapt to a new reality and make it feel normal. She wants to see that despite all the bombs, the death and destruction, life carries on and people persevere. 

She needs to reassure herself that it was all worth it.

III.

“Stabbed?”

The nurse nods and Elizabeth lets the word roll around her tongue, testing the weight of it. _Stabbed._ Badly enough to require a Medevac, and probably surgery. The nurse sees her unspoken question and answers it. 

“A knife punctured your lower abdomen, deep enough to require stitches. Fifteen. Thankfully, it didn’t nick any major organs and the surgery went well, but you hit your head and lost a lot of blood.” 

Elizabeth nods, letting the nurse’s words flow in one ear and out the other. It doesn’t feel real, even though it explains the pain low in her belly and the throbbing behind her temples. The nurse offers to up her pain medication but Elizabeth knows that it’ll just make her woozy and she needs to be alert for this, needs to tough it out and figure out exactly what happened.

“The people I was with,” she says, “how are they?” She almost doesn’t want to know the answer, wants to stay in the frozen moment where Caroline is wrapping her new orange scarf around her neck and Dan and Ahmed are bickering about soccer. 

She doesn’t want to think about what happened after, the noise and sounds and heat and _dust,_ ever-present and overwhelming. She doesn’t want to think about everything going dark.

The nurse gives her a sad smile and Elizabeth’s stomach clenches. “The doctor will be in soon, and he’ll be able to tell you more about what happened.” 

“But —”

“I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” she says, “all I know is that another person who came in with you is in surgery still.” 

“Who?”

“I don’t know, I’m sorry. He was sent straight to the operating room right when you were.”

He… Dan, or god forbid, Ahmed. He’s just a kid, barely twenty-two, eager and enthusiastic. So hopeful that enough work with the Americans will get him and his family visas someday, an opportunity for a new start in a place he’s only ever seen on a television screen. 

“What about the others? There were four of us…” 

The nurse looks like she’s about to say something when there’s a knock on the door and Elizabeth turns her head. It’s Dan, poking his head in with a wistful smile on his face. “Hey kid,” he says, keeping his voice deliberately soft, “can I come in?” 

Elizabeth nods, glad to see him not much worse for wear but heavy-hearted at the thought of Ahmed, still in surgery with his condition unknown. She doesn’t even dare think about why no one’s mentioned Caroline. 

Dan looks at the nurse and an unspoken conversation happens between them, after which she leaves the room and Elizabeth wonders what exactly is going on. What are they not telling her? 

Dan sits down on the corner of her bed and motions for her to stay propped up against the pillows when she tries to sit up again. “How are you feeling?”

Elizabeth shrugs her shoulders and then winces when the motion sends another ripple of pain through her body. “I’ve been better,” she says, trying for a quip and falling flat as it’s followed by a cough and a groan. 

Dan smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He looks tired and weary; there are streaks of dust on his forehead and his cargo pants didn’t used to be this particular colour. His salt and pepper hair is skewing heavily toward the latter and there’s a gaping hole in his right shirtsleeve that looks like it was slashed by a knife. 

“What happened?” Elizabeth asks, gripped by a sense of urgency, with fear coiling low in her belly. “Is Ahmed going to be okay? Where’s Caroline?”

IV.

The first thing she feels when she steps off the cargo plane and onto Iraqi soil is heat, rolling over them in waves. She feels it radiating from the tarmac, overpowering the wind created by the propellers and engines. It hits her like a punch to the gut and she glances over at Caroline, selfishly glad to see her colleague looking similarly overwhelmed. 

It’s good to have someone else here who’s close in experience and age; it doesn’t make her feel quite so much like a fish out of water. 

There’s the typical brass greeting them at the plane, infantrymen showing them to their bunks and a captain providing a formal welcome. There’s also Dan, whom they’ve only heard over a satellite phone before, ready to take them to the CIA briefing centre once they’ve thrown their duffles on their bunks. 

“Welcome to the desert, ladies,” he says, giving them a wink as they take in their surroundings, wide-eyed and trying their best to hide it. He reminds Elizabeth a little bit of George (who’s stationed somewhere right now, maybe Russia, possibly only an hour away), and her chest aches at the mix of familiarity and utter alienation. 

After their tour of the base, Caroline and Elizabeth follow Dan into a small conference room, outfitted with a whiteboard, table and chairs. He introduces them to Ahmed, a local kid who’s worked for the Americans for three years now, ever since finishing school. 

The four of them find a groove quickly; they complement each other’s skillsets and make quick work analyzing the intelligence they’re given and helping track the aftermath of the war. It’s rewarding work, seeing the efforts they’ve made over months and sometimes years put into action, but it’s also sobering to see the destruction left in its wake. 

When Elizabeth had been told she’d be sent to Iraq for six weeks, she hadn’t known what to tell Henry. It wasn’t like she could choose not to go, but with an eighteen-month-old and a newly retired Marine for a husband, she was acutely aware of the risks. 

She remembers sitting down to tell him that evening, after Conrad gave her the assignment. He was bouncing baby Stevie on his lap while trying to read a paper at the same time, and Elizabeth watched as his face contorted in worry and fear because he knew what she was headed for, better than anyone else. 

He’d driven her to the airbase and said goodbye with their daughter balanced on his hip, her whole world (or at least two-thirds of it) fading into the background as she made her way to the gates and blew them one last kiss over her shoulder. 

Now, as she’s sitting in the desert listening to Ahmed talk about his little sisters and Caroline show them photos of her three-year-old twin sons, Elizabeth feels an ache settle deep in her chest as she thinks about all the playtime she’s missing with Stevie, all the nights falling asleep wrapped in Henry’s arms. 

They’re making small-talk over iced tea they nicked from the canteen, a small relief considering their conference room only has a dinky fan in the corner. Elizabeth gets lost in their stories of home and she needs to snap herself out of it, needs to get back to work.

She asks Dan for a new file and slips back into the CIA-analyst version of herself, leaving Elizabeth behind in Virginia, thousands of miles away. Caroline takes one too, setting aside her bottle to spread out a map on the table. 

“Bess, can you look at this?” she asks after a minute, and Elizabeth scoots over so she can study the map from a better angle. 

The work helps; it takes her mind off of the circumstances and forces her to live in the here and now, to make the most of it.

V.

Dan takes a deep breath and exhales, as if steeling himself for what he’s about to say. “Ahmed’s in surgery still, but he should be out in a couple of hours and the doctors say he’s stable.” 

Elizabeth nods; that’s good, considering the circumstances of what probably happened to them. 

“And Caroline?” 

Dan shakes his head and Elizabeth holds her breath.

“She didn’t make it, Bess.” 

“What?” 

“At the market, she… she lost too much blood. They couldn’t resuscitate her at the base and she didn’t make it. They’re flying her back to Langley now, I called her family while you were in surgery.” 

It hits her like a punch to the gut and she feels all the blood draining from her face. She thinks she might be sick. Caroline? Dead? But she _can’t be,_ she has to be with all of them and go home to Tom and Noah and Charlie and she has to be alive — 

“Shh, kid, calm down.” Dan places a hand on her calf, squeezing, and Elizabeth forces her eyes to meet his. “Deep breaths, slowly, don’t agitate the stitches.” She follows along with his instructions, waiting for her breaths to gradually even out again. 

“Thanks,” she says, when taking a breath no longer feels like working against an anvil pressed on her chest. 

Dan gives her calf another squeeze. “How much do you remember?” he asks, and the concern in his voice is genuine. It’s the gentlest she’s ever heard him; he reminds her of George more than ever. There’s a pang in her chest. She misses her old friend, misses her desk back in Virginia, misses Conrad and Juliet and Isabelle. Above all, she misses Stevie and Henry, misses how much a simple touch of his hand would ground her right now. 

Elizabeth wracks her brain for any memories of what happened at the market, conversation snippets or strangers who got too close. It’s like someone draped them all in gauzy fabric, turned them into fragments that won’t quite fit. 

“Not much,” she confesses. “We were joking and then it all goes dark…”

VI.

The market square is bustling, filled with bright colours and the shouts of vendors hawking their wares. Elizabeth takes a moment to let it all wash over her. Stalls selling bright fabric butt up against fruit and vegetable vendors who share space with spice stalls and cheap knockoffs of Western branded t-shirts and running shoes. 

The sun has begun to set over the horizon and the market is awash with life, flecks of light bouncing off the brass pots and pans, and accenting the richly coloured mounds of spices and reams of patterned fabric. 

Caroline is chattering at Dan about the kind of shawl she’s looking for, and Elizabeth can tell he’d much rather be talking about anything else at all. He throws her a conspiratorial wink and she lets out a laugh, clueing in Ahmed who just shrugs his shoulders and grins. 

“The market looks nice and big,” Ahmed says in Arabic (one less thing to make them stick out in the crowd, like they're not already carrying a big banner proclaiming their foreign-ness), “but it’s much smaller than it used to be, there’s less selection. They’re using what they can right now.” 

Elizabeth nods and Dan fills in his description with talk about his past few missions — omitting details but painting a picture of decades in the region, of change and upheaval and hurt and survival. Ahmed adds details from his childhood: his love of soccer and Manchester United, his dream at age eight to move to England and play. Now, he wants college in America, a home for his mother and sisters, an opportunity for Laila to become a doctor, like she’s always wanted. 

Elizabeth wants it for him too. More than anything, she wants _good_ to have come from all the pain. 

“Look here,” Ahmed says, pointing to a stand with dried fruit and nuts. Medjool dates are piled high next to apricots and almonds, and he walks up to the owner with confidence, bartering with the old man until he emerges with a small sampler of fruit for all of them to taste. Elizabeth lets the syrupy sweetness of a date coat her tongue, closing her eyes to savour the feeling. It’s so much better than anything she can get in the States, and she wonders if she could bring some back for Henry. 

Elizabeth buys a package anyway, and she’s convinced she pays more for them than Ahmed would have, by virtue of being a woman and speaking accented Arabic, but she lets it slide and smiles as she presses the dinar into the salesman’s hand. 

Caroline has found a stand with scarves and shawls and is motioning for the rest of them to join her. She’s quickly wrapped Elizabeth into a discussion about whether a purple or orange one would better suit her auburn hair. Ahmed and Dan are standing off to the side, uninterested and passing the time arguing about Premier League soccer. 

Eventually, Caroline decides on burnt orange, and, after paying, they continue through the market. Caroline is winding her scarf around her head as they pass a corner, Dan is trying to convince Ahmed that Liverpool is far better than Manchester, and Elizabeth is basking in how carefree this moment feels, a sliver of levity that’s hard-fought among their day-to-day tasks. 

She thinks about sunshine, and rolling hills and the sweetness of the dates that still lingers, thinks about nothing at all until all of a sudden, there’s screaming. 

A stranger jumps out from a corner and Ahmed dives in front of Caroline and she vaguely registers their jumble of limbs hitting the dusty ground. 

“Duck!” Dan screams in English and Elizabeth hears movement and shuffling and she tries to get down but then there’s a sharp feeling by her hipbone and she’s suddenly falling and it all fades to black. 

VII. 

“Caroline was stabbed too,” Dan says in a whisper. “Nicked her aorta; she bled out at the market. Ahmed shielded her, and managed to save you both from the acid they were throwing.” 

Elizabeth gulps. Chemical burns. “How, how is he?” 

“A few broken bones, some burns, internal bleeding. Doctors say he’s stable but he’ll need to be in the ICU once he’s out of surgery.” 

She nods. “And his family?” 

“They’ve been notified and brought to a safe house on the base until we figure out who did this and why.” 

“Good. And you’re sure you’re okay?” 

Dan nods and gives her calf another squeeze. She suspects it’s as much comfort for her as a grounding mechanism for him. “Yeah, I was lucky. Don’t worry about me, kid, I’m just fine.” 

Elizabeth cracks a smile. “Well, you _could_ use a shower.” 

Dan barks out a laugh and she can see the relief, palpable on his face. “Hey, now, young lady, you haven’t had the privilege of seeing the rather creative hairdo you’re sporting now.” 

“You know, I’d laugh if it didn’t feel like someone were dragging nails through my lungs.” She shakes her head instead and gingerly shoves Dan’s shoulder. “Has anyone told Henry?” 

She doesn’t quite know how much time has passed between the stabbing, the initial surgery in Iraq, getting airlifted out of Baghdad and then waking up from surgery a second time in Landstuhl (Dan has begun to fill her in on some details, not all), but she assumes it’s been at least eighteen hours. 

She doesn’t know if the attack made the news, but if so, Henry must be worried sick. She needs him to know that she’s okay. 

“He’s on a plane here right now,” Dan says, and Elizabeth feels a weight falling off her shoulders. “He’ll be here in a couple of hours. In the meantime, get some rest, Bess.” 

“Thank you.” 

“Of course.” He gets up from the bed and gives her hand a squeeze. “I’ll go check if there’s any news about Ahmed, and see if I can take that shower.” Dan winks, waves and leaves her hospital room, letting the door click shut softly behind him. 

For the first time since waking up, Elizabeth is completely alone, and it’s now, accompanied only by the soft beeping of the monitors, that it begins to sink in that she was stabbed. That Ahmed was burned and beaten. That Caroline is dead. That she’s in a hospital bed in Germany with fifteen stitches in her side.

The irony of the number isn’t lost on her — one stitch for every year her parents were alive. It hurts to think about, but not as much as her body currently feels like it's on fire and burning from the inside. 

She knows she could do something about the pain, press the little button attached to the morphine drip to make it all go away, and it’s tempting, to not feel anything for a little while. But part of her feels like she owes it to Caroline to feel it all, to her husband and little boys whose mother won’t be coming home. They’re far too little to understand why their mommy went on a big trip and got hurt. 

Three-year-olds don’t think about the greater good or the victims of war. 

Three-year-olds want their mother to tuck them in at night and sing them a lullaby. 

There’s a moment where Elizabeth wonders if it would have been better for her to have died, not Caroline. She’d have left one child behind, not two, and Stevie’s had fewer memories with her mother than Noah and Charlie did with theirs. 

But then she thinks about Will and Henry and Stevie and her heart clenches in her chest. It’s unfathomable to leave them with even a fraction of the loss she experienced when her parents died. She cannot rob Will of the last piece of his family. She cannot leave Henry alone with Stevie. 

(She will, however, visit Tom, Noah and Charlie when all this is over, tell them about the jokes Caroline made, how she brightened her day every time they worked together. 

She’ll empathize and they’ll ask for guidance, for a handbook for the unspeakable, and she won’t be able to give it to them. 

She’ll come home drained and aching, both emotionally and physically, and she’ll only feel safe once she’s in Henry’s arms, Stevie nestled on her chest, her whole family cocooned together.) 

Elizabeth is not a religious person, but today she thinks about what Henry would say in a situation like this, and sends up a prayer for Caroline and her family, for Ahmed and his. She doesn’t know if there’s a god out there, doesn’t particularly care, but it feels right to ask god to keep a watch over all of them tonight. 

Then she presses on the little button and waits as the morphine enters her system before she falls into a fitful, dreamless sleep. 

VIII. 

The Adams siblings have never been good at coping, not really. You’d think that after losing both their parents they’d have found ways to productively channel their losses, but… well. 

There’s a reason Elizabeth is a spy and Will is in med school with hopes to become a trauma surgeon and register with Doctors Without Borders, which’ll inevitably result in work in war zones. There’s a reason why Elizabeth volunteered to ride all the green horses, despite how often they’d buck her off, why Will and his friends went off-roading in high school and college, why Elizabeth straps on scuba gear every time she’s near an ocean, craving the weightlessness and quiet that only the open water can provide. 

(Henry, who likes to refer to the ocean as a “fish toilet” and has never played hockey since that one fateful winter, copes through an abundance of caution rather than a voluntary — and to him unnecessary — exposure to risk. When Elizabeth points out that he _voluntarily_ flew fighter planes for a living, he is forced to admit that maybe his risk-aversion doesn’t always express itself equally across the board.)

Henry was already in basic training by the time Elizabeth was approached on campus by a nice, middle-aged man who sat her down and told her he was a friend of her professor. He said he’d been told about her intellect and proclivity for analysis — how her math degree from undergrad and current foreign affairs master’s made for a valuable combination, how her knowledge of Arabic and Farsi could prove useful someday. 

He said he wondered if she’d ever thought about serving her country someday, and if so, how she might feel about a job at the CIA. 

At first, Elizabeth thought he was joking, because that kind of thing doesn’t just _happen,_ you don’t just get recruited for the CIA on your college campus in broad daylight, but apparently, she was wrong, because a few months, one degree and two very bizarre conversations with both Henry and Will later, she was part of a training class of analysts at Langley. 

She was awestruck when she first entered the building, the hallowed halls of the Central Intelligence Agency, and she felt incredibly small and anonymous in the grand scheme of it all. She wondered how she fit into the machine, what role she was set to play, what cog she would turn. 

She was green and bright-eyed and naive and all the things she was bound to be but tried her hardest to hide. She was hopeful in a building full of cynics, an optimist among realists. She wanted — still wants — to make change, to do her part. 

She wants to make this worth it, to make it count. 

IX.

Elizabeth doesn’t know how many hours have passed the next time she opens her eyes, but it does feel comparatively easier and the pain has lessened just a fraction of a degree. She’s still in the same sterile hospital room, and her whole body still aches, but at least now she’s aware of what happened. 

There’s also a hand tangled with hers now, and it takes her a second to register the feeling, but then she follows the arm and sees the person attached to it — perched on a chair, his eyes closed, breathing evenly. _Henry._

Immediately, tears spring to her eyes and she chokes them back on instinct. She hasn’t cried since she woke up in the hospital, not once, both because she doesn’t want to cry in front of Dan and because none of this has felt tangible until now, with Henry at her bedside and the stark reminder that this so easily could have been her casket instead. 

But she’s alive and she’ll be okay and Henry is here. The wave of relief that washes over her is so great that she can no longer keep the tears at bay. Her sniffling must have been loud enough to wake him because she can feel him stirring, and she squeezes his hand gently as she watches his eyes open. 

The look on his face rips her heart clean in two. “Henry,” she whispers on a sob, and she watches him react; his eyes open wide and his mouth tries to decide between a smile and a choked sob of its own. He squeezes her hand back and scoots his chair forward so that he can press the gentlest of kisses to her lips and it’s all too much. 

“Baby,” he whispers when he pulls back, “how are you feeling?” 

Elizabeth looks up at him, his face that’s one part exhaustion, one part concern and all parts love. She looks at her husband and thinks of Tom back in Virginia, of Dan who’s probably looking for a shower and flirting with a nurse, of Ahmed lying in an ICU bed and probably still unconscious. 

She has no idea how she’s feeling, none at all. 

“Caroline is dead,” she chokes out, wiping the tears with the hand that’s not still clutching Henry’s. She’s gripping him like a vise, an anchor that’s keeping her from drifting out to sea. 

Henry cups her cheek, his touch feather-light. 

“I know, Elizabeth. Dan told me. I’m so sorry.” 

“Her kids,” she starts, the words coming out choppy and rough, “she has twin boys. They’re three.” 

Henry nods, fighting tears of his own. 

“They shouldn’t have to grow up without a mother.”

“I know, babe, I know.”

Speaking of children… “Where’s Stevie?” Surely not in Germany, but where else? 

“I brought her to Miss Janie’s, and my mom drove down from Pittsburgh to pick her up as soon as she could. She’ll be with grandma and grandpa; she’s fine.” 

“Good.” 

She wonders how much of this Stevie will understand once she’s back home, hurt and shaken but recuperating, how much she’ll remember in five years, ten, about the time mommy went on a trip and came back with a broken leg and bruises. 

She wonders what it’ll do to a child to see their parent in pain. (She doesn’t know that feeling, she just knows loss and she’s glad she’s able to spare her daughter that emotion.)

Elizabeth is ripped out of her thoughts by a knock on her door; she and Henry look up at the same time to see Dan (who, by all accounts, looks freshly showered and has donned a set of scrubs) poke his head into the room. 

“Ahmed’s awake,” he says. “He’s gonna be okay.” 

“Oh, thank god,” Elizabeth chokes out, followed immediately by, “I want to see him,” and then, near-immediate protests from both Henry and Dan. But she’s persistent, and with a nurse’s assistance (and her doctor’s reluctant permission), she soon finds herself being wheeled down the hall by Henry, her IV hung beside her and her leg elevated. 

Sitting in the wheelchair hurts more than she’ll ever admit, but she needs to do this. For Ahmed. For Caroline. For herself. 

Whatever she had expected upon entering Ahmed’s ICU room, it’s not this. There are wires running everywhere; he’s hooked up to oxygen and gauze bandages cover half his face and most of his chest. If Elizabeth thought she was in pain, it’s nothing compared to the agony Ahmed must be feeling now. 

Despite everything, he cracks a smile when Henry wheels her to his bedside. “Bess,” he says, voice strained, “I am so glad you are alright.” 

She reaches out to take his hand, as gingerly as she can. “I will be. How are you feeling?” 

“Like I was hit by a bus,” he says, shrugging and cracking a smile. “But it will be alright soon. And my family is safe; that is all that matters.” 

“Have they been able to call?” She knows they can’t fly to visit him and he’ll likely be in the hospital for a while, but she hopes there’s some way of maintaining contact. 

“Yes, I spoke with my mother and with Laila. They are worried, but they do not have to be. I’ll be with them soon.” He seems to realize then that they’re not alone in his room, that Dan is also there, leaning on a dresser and watching them, that Henry is gripping Elizabeth’s chair. 

“Your husband,” he says, and Elizabeth cracks a smile. She might have told a few too many stories, and embarrassing ones at that. Then, to Henry, “I’ve heard so much about you.” 

Henry laughs, and Elizabeth grins. 

X.

Coming home is hard. They fly on an Army plane that can accommodate patients, and it’s as comfortable as a transatlantic flight can be when your leg is broken and your stitches are still healing. 

They decide not to bring Stevie home the same day they get in, so that Elizabeth can take a few hours to figure out how to navigate their apartment on crutches. It feels so foreign to be back in the comforts of home, while she’s still waiting for her belongings to be shipped back from the desert. 

(Dan managed to grab the shoulder bag she took to the market and bring it on the helo, but the dates fell out somewhere along the way. Henry will never get to taste them after all.) 

She feels guilty, almost, for the soft sheets on her bed, the tea Henry insists on making and the help Miss Janie will provide when Elizabeth can’t move around enough to play with Stevie and Henry’s at school. She feels guilty for all the time she’ll get to spend with her daughter while Charlie, Noah and Tom are grieving, while Ahmed is relying on a satellite phone to talk to his mother and sisters. 

She feels guilty but she’s also so grateful, and she cries the first time she gets to hold Stevie again, after Henry deposits their daughter in her lap with the words, “Be gentle, bug, Mommy’s hurting.” It makes the tears come faster, and she breathes in the baby scent that still lingers on Stevie, trying to focus only on the now. 

When her little girl turns her head, pats Elizabeth’s cheek and says, “Momma, no sad,” it’s her undoing. 

The first week is hard: She has to re-learn how to do things for herself, how to shower with a cast, how not to agitate the incision, how to deal with a new set of nightmares. She expects to see Caroline’s auburn hair out of the corner of her eye or to hear Dan’s quips and Ahmed’s laughter, but she doesn’t. 

She even finds herself missing the dust and the heat, and she wonders if this is what it was like for Henry, when he came back from war. 

“A little bit,” he says one night, when they’re cocooned under the covers, holding hands and lying as close as her injuries will allow. “It sticks with you, for a while at least.” 

“I can’t shake it,” she admits, emboldened in the darkness. “I see their faces, and then everything goes black.” 

“I still see my squad,” Henry replies, “and a lot of other people too. They’ll follow you for a while, until eventually, they’re just memories and thinking of them doesn’t hurt so much anymore.” 

“Promise?” she asks, her voice plaintive and small, like a child. 

Henry presses a kiss to her forehead, her cheek, her lips. “I promise.” 

“I believe you.” 

XI.

Elizabeth returns to work six weeks later, still on crutches and taking it slow. Henry drives her up to Langley, as far as he’s allowed, and Isabelle helps her walk the rest of the way. 

She takes a deep breath as she enters the atrium, her eyes stopping to look at the wall of stars that commemorate the fallen. There’s a new one, in the bottom right, and Elizabeth feels her throat hitch. 

She makes her way over to the wall and touches the star, gingerly, carefully. Caroline. 

“Thank you,” she whispers, and “I’m so sorry.” 

She turns back to Isabelle after a minute, ready to go back into her bullpen and get to work. She’s more determined than ever to make a difference. 

It has to have been worth it. For Caroline, she’ll make it count.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/_bucketofrice), [Tumblr](https://good-things-come-in-threes.tumblr.com) and [ffn](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/7100320/teammccord).


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